An Independent Spirit

Friends Celebrate Life Of Woman Killed By Bus

By Laurie Koch Thrower

Daily Press

March 24, 1999

HAMPTON — As soon as Donald Fennell heard about the accident, he knew it was Lori Yocom.

Fennell, who uses a wheelchair, knew Yocom from his time as a counselor with the Peninsula Center for Independent Living. He knew Yocom didn't let her disability keep her from tooling around Newport News.

He joined about 50 others in a memorial service Tuesday for Yocom at First Baptist Church on King Street in Hampton.

Yocom was hit by a Newport News school bus as she crossed Oyster Point Road in her wheelchair March 1. No charges have been filed, and the incident is still being investigated, Officer Harold Eley of Newport News police said Tuesday.

Yocom's family buried her in Illinois. Tuesday's memorial service gave local people a chance to say goodbye and to reaffirm their determination not to let their disabilities prevent them from living their lives.

At the memorial service, the Rev. William D. Booth of First Baptist and member of the board of Peninsula Center for Independent Living, led the group in prayer.

"We're all your children, some with special challenges," he prayed. "We pray there will be a greater sensitivity in all our community for those who must travel different ways."

People who knew Yocom described her as headstrong, anything but mild-mannered - as someone who did what she wanted and didn't care what people thought of her.

"We're not here to make Lori out to be something that she really wasn't," said Catherine Tyler-Northan, who was Yocom's counselor at the Peninsula Center for Independent Living, "but we are here to acknowledge her life. We are here to recognize her as part of the disabled community, and as such, her life had meaning."

Tyler-Northan said she met Yocom in 1987, when Yocom came to the center seeking help finding housing and a wheelchair.

"She found ways of letting me know, 'I'm not going away until I get this house; I'm not going away until I get this wheelchair,' " Tyler-Northan said. "In retrospect, I call this perseverance.''

Yocom wanted to do all of the things that people without disabilities want to do.

She loved going to Patrick Henry Mall, especially to the Payless shoe store, Tyler-Northan said. Transportation for the disabled wasn't always available to take Yocom when and where she had an urge to go. So she'd head out on her own, traveling some of Newport News' busiest areas in her wheelchair.

"This was her way of expressing her right to go where she decided to go," Tyler-Northan said.

"Let not her death be a deterrent to people within the disabled community," she said. "Instead, let us focus on the way she chose to live her life, which was independently."

Earnest Spivey, a friend of Yocom's, said Yocom rejected help.

"You didn't tell Lori what to do," Spivey said. "You could make all the suggestions you wanted, but she did things her own way."

Talking after the service, Fennell said he knew that accidents like Yocom's can send a chill through someone who relies on a wheelchair for transportation.

"Your first thought is to shy away, slow down," Fennell said.

Several years ago, he narrowly avoided an accident with a vehicle, he said. Afterward, his daughter became very protective of him.

"I said, 'What you're doing is you're killing me,' " Fennell said.

Fennell said he's committed to living his life and "just enjoying what God has given you and what the legislators have given you - being able to access your community."

Laurie Koch Thrower can be reached at 247-7894 or by e-mail at lthrower@dailypress.com